Inside Orchard

Why a SpaceX and Tesla Merger Is Likely insideorchard.com/essays/why… A Musk Co. conglomerate structure consisting of Elon Musk’s various public and private ventures strikes me as something of an inevitable end point.

The idea that the entire AI buildout is going to come to a halt because of the midterms will likely be right up there with the DeepSeek panic in terms of market overreactions.

Cancelling Cybertruck after all the years of getting it to production to “make room for CyberCab” is a lame excuse. There are like 500 CyberCabs in one city that only Tesla influencers are riding in. Taking away consumer cars instead of building what the people want will be the end of Tesla! Very sad what happened to Tesla over the last 5 years. Autonomy is great but Teslas are actually very fun to drive manually. If you want to advance the mission, build more of what the people want. Build the large family CyberSUV build the cheap compact CyberCab with steering and pedals to have everyone driving a Tesla EV. People still want to drive their own cars. Not everyone wants to just sit in a 2 seater with no steering and pedals. This will be very bad and time will tell. $tsla

This has been the worst two-to-three-month stretch for AI since the pandemic. AI companies have completely lost the plot. Everyone is focused on getting over the IPO finish line before it's too late. You can feel the waves of employees eager to cash out. The data center topic, botched from the get go, has become downright toxic in the U.S. Personal agents, in their current form, are a massive head fake. Musk punted SpaceX through an IPO earlier in the year before most people even knew what was going on. Anthropic is going to try to give it a go with its IPO in a tumultuous environment. OpenAI missed the IPO window altogether this year. On the product front, it's a mess. Agents aimed at the mass market are flopping HARD. This is technology in search of problems to solve. The only people still pushing them at consumers are AI grifters. Meta disclosed Muse usage figures. They were not impressive despite an absolutely insane marketing push in the U.S. OpenAI's Dots, aimed at early adopters, are uninspiring. These products are not solving problems. Companies are pushing agents because they need to figure out a way to monetize obscene amounts of capex ASAP. Wall Street has had enough. And all of this took place in what was probably the most open and friendly AI regulation environment imaginable. That will be ending in January.

SCOOP: Major U.S. banks are detecting unauthorized third-party AI agents inside customer accounts, including some attempting to take actions that appear to be independent of user instructions, sources told Axios. The findings have alarmed banking executives, who are racing to restrict access to their systems as AI moves at a velocity faster than financial institutions can respond, multiple industry and bank executives told Axios. Several banks are now preparing for worst-case and even “day after” scenarios, including how to rapidly secure or restore customer accounts if things go wrong, the people said. Several bank executives told Axios they're struggling to distinguish between human users and AI agents. One executive said banks also struggle to determine whether agents are authorized by customers or potentially operating without their permission, more akin to rogue agent behavior. Read my latest for Axios here: axios.com/2026/10/22/ai-agen…

The War Against AI Agents Has Begun insideorchard.com/essays/the… Odds are rising that AI agents will be hamstrung by barriers being put up across the business world. Without mass market adoption, agentic AI may very well be kneecapped before consumers warm up to the technology.

BREAKING: A Tesla–SpaceX merger could be announced before Tesla’s annual meeting in early December, per Barclays. The most likely structure: SpaceX acquires Tesla in an all-stock deal, with Tesla shareholders getting about 0.7 SpaceX shares per Tesla share, plus a likely premium. Barclays says Musk would own about 37% of the combined company, with roughly 56% of the voting power.

Incredibly honored to join the Board of Directors of @Nike. I’ve been a lifelong fan of the brand and everything it stands for: sport, innovation, creativity and constantly pushing what’s possible. Excited to contribute to what comes next. Just Do It. ✔️